Hanna’s Study Abroad Adventures

So at long last I begin my blog. This is for you dad who has checked it everyday and found nothing. It is a daunting task to start a blog, especially after being here almost a month already and am forgetting by the minute the fun little details of each day. It is also daunting because I have a certain little brother who is a crazy good writer and I just don’t think that my blog can compete with his. I know it’s not a competition but you know, the whole sibling rivalry that theoretically exists.

On first impression Chile didn’t seem all that different than the States. Yeah, we have a constant view of beautiful mountains and everyone speaks insanely fast, slang-filled Spanish, but first impressions are pretty superficial and I hadn’t really known what to expect so to find it so completely normal was sort of a surprise. My host family picked me up at the airport carrying a sign with my name and a large bag of chocolate bars. An excellent way to start a trip. On the car ride to their apartment I was informed that Kevin, the youngest child, 17, had recently broken his leg playing tennis and wasn’t allowed to leave the house. Maggie, the mom, is recently separated and seems to be trying a little too hard to relive her youth. In the past couple weeks she has just started going on dates and is wonderfully giddy while recounting her nervousness during each encounter. Vivi, 19, is studying nursing at La Catolica, which is where I go as well. The first couple days were spend wandering the city trying to get all my paper work sorted out. Vivi’s boyfriend Pablo drove us around much of the time. He is a rather hyperactive, tank top wearing guy with long curly hair. One of the first encounters with him he had on a black, Harley-Davidson tank top. I was very amused.

The more we traversed the city the more I began to notice the quirky differences in dress, hairstyle, and conduct that will hopefully never integrate itself…again…into our culture. I speak, yes, of the mullet and the fanny pack. They are everywhere. They jump out at you from behind walls, they stalk you through the streets, they wistle at you when you walk by. Even worse is the dreaded mullet. And I’m not talking about the….(insert suspenseful music here) duh dun duh dun dah dun….aaaarrggghhhhhhhh….run its the Dreaded Mullet… as in terrifying, scary, …no I am talking hippie meets white trash mullet with dread locks cascading down the back. Somehow the combination must violate some code, somewhere. Actually probably the worst hair I have thus seen was a girl, who at first glance appeared to be wearing a skull cap, but then I realized that horror of horrors, the top of her head was buzzed while an inch wide band of hair encircled her hair line. Hair is like an art form here. It is like that type of art that you seen in modern art museums and that makes you stop and mutter, “huh, interesting. I feel like a little kid could have done that with their eyes closed.”

Then there is the fanny pack…it is the fanny pack. I don’t think I need say more.